Considerations in Medical Software Purchase: Evidence from Dentistry in India

With the proliferation of software in medical industry, marketers are trying to gain insights into the factors that medical professions consider important while making their software purchase decisions. New product adoption by a service provider has not been the focus of academic research in emerging markets like India. Since India is culturally and socially very different from western countries (where most of the academic research has taken place), this study becomes important. Since medical software is still a niche area, there is a need to investigate adoption and diffusion of these new innovations in the market. This research explores the key considerations in medical software purchase so as to improve the probability of marketing success of these products. The conceptual framework was developed based on extensive literature review. The scales were adapted and the framework was empirically tested. Data was collected from 160 respondents from the dentistry business and could be considered representative of the target market of such medical software in India. The results suggest that the adoption decision is facilitated by operational novelty, trialability, perceived risk, and relative advantage at an overall level. However, operational novelty and relative advantage were the significant factors which improved the probability of adoption. This finding could be used for designing marketing initiatives and budget allocation. This framework could be a base model from where to start the process. This could help them have framework for deciding their marketing strategies. However, prudent marketers of medical software need to understand the behavior of their specific “target market.”